The Heavy Duty Press is honoured to publish Mr Steingass’s tenth book of poems, Stones Watch in Silence, featuring 18 new poems touching earthly issues of geology, such as deep time, fossilization, and continental drift.
THESE POEMS
start with the one stone
you like enough to keep. Pick me,
its shape says, its color and size,
the way the stone nests in your pocket
or floats in the shallow pool
of your open hand. Crazy,
how you stand clutching
this one stone you see
suddenly prove everything.
Stones Watch in Silence, by David Steingass
Limited edition hard cover, 25 copies
72 pages (digitally printed on Lettermark 70lb cream), illustrated with 20 black and white photographs (full bleed; 16 photos by Brent Nicastro, others by Stephanie Edwards, Michael Koppa, and Al Harris), 6 x 9, Smyth bound in three signatures in hardcovers with linen book cloth by Grimm Book Bindery in Madison, Wisconsin, plus Stonehenge dust jacket, letterpress printed from granite tiles by The Heavy Duty Press. ISBN 979-8-9893902-2-9
Stones Watch in Silence, by David Steingass
First edition soft cover, 250 copies
72 pages (80lb Natural Cougar Opaque Smooth), 6″ x 9″; illustrated with 20 black and white photographs (full bleed: 16 photos by Brent Nicastro, others by Stephanie Edwards, Michael Koppa, and Al Harris); designed by The Heavy Duty Press and printed by Bookmobile in Minneapolis, MN; perfect bound with matte finish, soft touch laminated cover. ISBN 979-8-9893902-3-6
(bookstores please inquire for wholesale pricing)
RECENTLY COMPLETED (13 NOV 2025)
Dry Stacking Stone Walls, by David Steingass
Limited edition accordion fold artist’s book, 52 copies
4 panels, 4.5″ x 6.75″, total dimensions 18″ wide x 6.75″ high. Cover image is an inkjet printed photograph by Michael Koppa (the printer) taken at Dutton Farm House in Dummerston, Vermont, with title and photo credits letterpress printed with silver ink on the Vandercook. Interior poem is hand set in 10 pt Monotype Baskerville cast by Ed Rayher at The Swamp Press and letterpress printed with Hanco oil-based Sable Black on Stonehenge paper. Interior photograph taken in the Yorkshire Dales by Alan Harris is giclee printed on 300 gsm Hahnemuhle photo rag paper, and mounted with acid-free PVA.
David Steingass is a well established composer of accessible, vernacular poetry, with his first book of poems, Body Compass, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1969, followed by American Handbook in 1972. Fishing for Dynamite, published by Red Dragonfly Press in 1995, saw two editions. The Heavy Duty Press published Native Son at Home in 2000, featuring the six “guidebook” sections from GreatPlains: A Prairie Lovesong, an epic book length poem published by Red Dragonfly Press in 2002.
David’s poems reflect his farmstead childhood of draft horses and party line telephones, as well as incorporating black hole technology, the speed of light, and a continuing fascination with the natural world and the foibles of the humans who occupy it. He lives and writes in Madison, Wisconsin.
For further insight, you might enjoy reading An Interview with David Steingass, published online by Yahara Prairie Lights.
(bookstores please inquire for wholesale pricing)